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The coveted Nobel Prize in Literature for 2025 has been bestowed upon from Hungary author László Krasznahorkai, as announced by the committee.

The Academy praised the seventy-one-year-old's "powerful and prophetic collection that, amidst apocalyptic dread, reasserts the power of art."

An Esteemed Career of Bleak Fiction

Krasznahorkai is known for his bleak, melancholic novels, which have garnered numerous prizes, for instance the 2019 National Book Award for translated literature and the 2015 Man Booker International Prize.

A number of of his works, among them his novels his debut and The Melancholy of Resistance, have been turned into feature films.

Debut Novel

Hailing in the Hungarian town of Gyula in the mid-1950s, Krasznahorkai first gained recognition with his 1985 initial work Satantango, a bleak and mesmerising depiction of a disintegrating rural community.

The novel would go on to earn the Man Booker International Prize award in translation many years later, in the 2010s.

A Distinctive Literary Style

Commonly referred to as postmodernist, Krasznahorkai is known for his lengthy, intricate sentences (the twelve chapters of Satantango each comprise a solitary block of text), apocalyptic and somber themes, and the kind of unwavering force that has led literary experts to liken him to Gogol, Melville and Kafka.

The novel was famously adapted into a seven-hour film by filmmaker Béla Tarr, with whom Krasznahorkai has had a long creative partnership.

"The author is a significant writer of epic tales in the European literary tradition that includes Franz Kafka to the Austrian writer, and is characterised by absurdist elements and bizarre extremes," commented the committee chair, chair of the Nobel panel.

He portrayed Krasznahorkai’s prose as having "evolved into … continuous syntax with long, winding phrases without full stops that has become his trademark."

Critical Acclaim

Susan Sontag has described the author as "today's Hungarian expert of the apocalyptic," while the writer W.G. Sebald commended the broad relevance of his outlook.

Just a small number of Krasznahorkai’s novels have been translated into English. The critic James Wood once noted that his books "are shared like rare currency."

Global Influences

Krasznahorkai’s career has been influenced by travel as much as by language. He first exited the communist Hungary in 1987, staying a period in Berlin for a grant, and later was inspired from east Asia – especially Asian nations – for novels such as The Prisoner of Urga, and his book on China.

While developing War and War, he journeyed extensively across European nations and stayed in Ginsberg's New York residence, stating the famous Beat poet's assistance as vital to finalizing the work.

Author's Perspective

Questioned how he would explain his work in an interview, Krasznahorkai answered: "Letters; then from these characters, vocabulary; then from these words, some concise lines; then further lines that are lengthier, and in the main extremely lengthy phrases, for the duration of 35 years. Elegance in prose. Fun in darkness."

On audiences discovering his work for the first time, he added: "If there are individuals who have not yet read my works, I would refrain from advising anything to read to them; on the contrary, I’d recommend them to venture outside, sit down at a location, perhaps by the banks of a creek, with no tasks, nothing to think about, just remaining in silence like stones. They will in time come across someone who has already read my novels."

Nobel Prize Context

Prior to the declaration, betting agencies had pegged the frontrunners for this year's award as an avant-garde author, an avant garde from China writer, and the Hungarian.

The Nobel Award in Writing has been given on 117 previous occasions since 1901. Latest laureates include the French author, the musician, the Tanzanian-born writer, Glück, the Austrian and the Polish author. The previous year's honoree was the South Korean writer, the South Korean author most famous for her acclaimed novel.

Krasznahorkai will officially receive the prize medal and document in a ceremony in the month of December in the Swedish capital.

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